


Those Who Ain't

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, School Shootings, Unhealthy Relationships, this is like 80s-90s stuck fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 07:24:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10962501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It’s natural selection,he told you one night while layering duct tape over your pipe bombs,those who are gonna run are gonna, and those who ain’t gonna run ain’t.





	Those Who Ain't

**Author's Note:**

> HI FRIENDS 
> 
> first off: this isn't a very shippy fic. this is a very touchy subject and i was inspired to deal with it because i recently gained a huge interest in the columbine shooters and their mental states and dynamic and yadda yadda. don't take this as an attempt to glorify school shootings. it ain't. 
> 
> second off: i hope you enjoy. 
> 
> [you can find my tumblr here.](http://luciferslittlekitten.tumblr.com/)

Your thumb scrubs over the rough surface of the side of the barrel, and you stare ahead at the side door. Your bookbag is in the car, filled with unfinished homework and overpriced textbooks, and the important backpack is slung over your shoulder as you trudges along the slick parking lot. The sky was dreary from the passing rain, and the chatter from the students that lurked outside was ringing in your ears.

“Are you okay?” You ask him since he hasn’t said anything such the car door slammed shut. You’re trying to forget how terrified you are. You’re trying to remember everything he told you, trying to convince yourself that they all really deserved this.

“I’m fine,” he tells you, simply, “I just need you to not psyche yourself out, man, you know you’re gonna get scared if you don’t can the pussy shit.”

“The pussy shit is canned,” You assure him, concern gone, instead a heavy scowl now settles into your features, “Don’t patronize me. I’m just as much a part of this as you are.”

“I know,” he says, dropping his hand to his side and tugging his jacket taut. The rain is picking up again, and several of the students outside trickle in with the oncoming rainfall. “Let’s just get inside.”

\----

===>

“Fucking ridiculous!” you squawk like some bird, shoving Karkat hard enough to jostle him. It’s enough to make you smug, since Vantas has been gunning for linebacker since sixth grade, and he’s not a small guy. Hasn’t really even been on the team, though, not with his family’s finances and his grades. He couldn’t swing it if he wanted to, ‘cause he and his family are broke as a joke. “You’ve never gotten your dick wet? You’re shitting me, Vantas. Completely frickin’ shitting me.”

It’s just after school, and your house is two blocks away from the school. It’s an easy walk, and Karkat’s got coupons for smoothies because of Kankri Vantas’ recent couponing obsession. You guess being piss-poor gives a guy some initiative to try and pinch his pennies, but the idea of Karkat’s pocket bulging with coupons is enough to make you laugh on its own.

Summer comes about in five more weeks, and you’ve been counting down. Vriska’s taking you to California with her family this year, and you’re psyched to get out of Texas. It isn’t so much that you hate it, even if you do, it’s mostly that this the last summer you’re gonna have with the best of your friends before they go off to college. You can only name a couple of other folks who are even staying around for another year, lame underclassmen like Nepeta and Tavros and guys in your grade like Ampora who you’re hardly on speaking terms with. With your harem leaving for college, or jobs in construction or retail, you don’t have a lot to look forward to in your senior year.

You’re gonna make these last five weeks count, first off with your favorite two guys.

“I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all!” he insists, and you just keep cackling over his words until he huffs in frustration, “It’s just as well to wait for the right person, you know!” he insists, and you laugh so hard your stomach does a topsy-turvy.

“It’s kind of ridiculous,” Dave says.

“You’re kind of a dumbass, Strider,” Karkat grumbles at him and Dave arm leans over your shoulder and ruffles his hair. When he pulls back, his arm drops around them and tugs you close to his side, and just to tease Karkat, you shimmy against Strider like he’s the only warmth left in this world. You’re pretty good at poking fun at the two of them, who like to wear you between them both like they’re playing some big game of tug-a-war. Boys are silly, and you’re just smart enough to work with that.

Karkat is visibly upset, but he just swallows down his complaints and lets Strider have his way. You can’t say you’re not a little disappointed. For all your play, and all your problem-causing, you like it when there’s at least a little conflict. You guess you should’ve expected as much outta Vantas.

Dave’s the alpha in their friendship, has been since the two met each other. You’ve known them since they were the cool eighth graders who snuck cigarettes and let you and Vriska smoke with them in the downstairs boy’s bathroom. Even back then, when Karkat was more chubby than stocky and when Dave was more lanky than tall; when Dave fucked up, Karkat fell with him. Dave’s a bad boy, and Karkat’s a Catholic who doesn’t believe in sex before marriage, raises hell against the homosexuals, and wants to run the communists into the ground one day. Karkat wants to lead, sure, but Dave wants to _dominate_ and it’s in these very nuances that the lines in the sand are drawn.

“Hey, c’mon, sport,” Dave says before Karkat can go off and get pissy, and even though you laugh as Dave grins down at you, the stoniness of Karkat’s face bothers you. You wonder if Dave’s gonna run _him_ into the ground some day. “Don’t be a fuckin’ spoilsport. You’re gonna ruin Terezi’s image of you.”

You push away your thoughts of Karkat long enough to sound casual. “You two already _have_ ruined your images,” you tell them, grinning, breaking away from Dave and ignoring his offended gasp. You twirl around and walk backward just in front of them. “That’s why you can’t get any of the girls in _your_ grade to hang out with y’all.”

“The girls in our grade ain’t you, sweetheart,” Dave offers and Karkat gives him a bitter side glance that he doesn’t even notice. Your grin only widens and you spin back around on your heel as you press the crosswalk button. You slip your hands under the straps on your backpack to have something to hold onto, and you bounce a little on your heels.

“Oh, I know they aren’t,” you tell him, and look over your shoulder at Karkat. He doesn’t look back at you and you sigh and turn back to the road in front of you. “And you’re lucky for it.”

“Like hell we are,” Karkat says, finally, “You’re just unlucky you feel in with us. Most girls do ‘cause of Strider.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Dave asks him with a laugh, nudging Karkat’s shoulder with his own.

“It means she thinks you like her,” Karkat tells him, “It makes her think you could like her.”

And as the light goes from stop to go, he pushes in front of Dave and grabs your hand.  

You blink at him, and then back at Dave, who seems to be as surprised as you as. You have a hankering there’s something more than surprise on his face, and you also have a hankering it’s about something more than you and Karkat. He speeds up, holds onto your opposite arm with almost a desperation, and hisses something at Karkat behind your back. And he’s holding you tight, and Karkat’s hand is squeezing yours, and you just want to cross the street.

Somehow, being caught between the two of them isn’t so fun anymore.

\----

The first thing Dave thinks to do is draw back, and shoot Gamzee Makara dead in the skull.

You almost don’t process that he’s done it for a second, you almost don’t process that you should unload on Tavros before he wheels away ‘cause the kid is a sitting duck, but before you can even reach for your gun Dave’s killed the both of them, and you must look like the biggest idiot because you feel sick to your stomach. Dave looks unaffected. You guess you never processed, through weeks of shooting cans in the pasture of Nepeta’s farm, that eventually you wouldn’t be shooting aluminum. You never thought it would look so ugly.

“I thought you said you were in,” Dave tells you. And you are. Because there’s no going back now.

There aren’t any other kids hanging outside the building. You figure no one would’ve processed those were gunshots yet. You still have time to drop arms and step out. You still have time to get shot by Dave, and you still have time to shoot him. You have time to end it before it starts because you know Dave is going to go in that building and weed all the cancer out by the roots, ‘cause that’s what he’s told you he’s going to do, and the look he’s giving you is telling you that you’re about to go from being his best friend to being another body on the ground.

“I’m in,” you tell him, finally, and you glance at the doors, and say much quieter, “I’m in.”

\----

===>

You’re a bit of a stickler for the rules, you’ll say that much.

Your little brother, however, is not.

You suppose it doesn’t help Mother and Father let him run rampant with that no-good Strider boy, and it helps even less that they’re both too involved with the church to be involved with him. You try your best to be good to him, to help him with his homework and everything a good older brother should do, but you’re working half the time and going to college the other half, and keeping up with your college funds is harder work than you’d expected it to be, even with a partial scholarship on the line for being valedictorian of your high school class. Of course, you don’t hate your family for not having enough to sustain your education, but it doesn’t mean you have to be happy with it.

Karkat isn’t too happy with you, though, even though you don’t have the faintest idea why. You chalk it up to him hanging around the wrong types of kids, and pray he’ll grow out of this phase of hating the world and everything in it soon before he goes on to become an actual adult.

Karkat was much different than you, in terms of excellence. Not his wits, you wouldn’t doubt those, but his grades were low and you wouldn’t be surprised if he was arrested on terms of truancy. He’s not a bad kid, he really isn’t, and he’s not a dumb one, either. But he’s not smart enough to get into a nice school for free, and your family hardly has enough money to keep up with your bills. You know he’ll do something good with himself if he tries, but if he doesn’t?

You don’t like thinking about that.

You’re home for the weekend since Cronus is housing his friend Rufioh, who’s coming out of a particularly sour relationship, and though you would’ve loved to be there, your parents had already asked you to help the church out for the weekend. You told Cronus to call if he needed you and had already taken to making the best of a sour situation. You’ve spent a lot of your time practically babysitting Karkat, trying to pull him into conversations about this or that or the other. But he’s usually unresponsive, and when he does talk, it’s with that buddy Strider of his.

He’s over on Friday after school, kicks off his shoes off the door, and the two of them settle into Karkat’s room. You used to share it with your younger brother, but he’s grown now, and you’d hate to invade his privacy. You’ve taken up residence on the couch so that you wouldn’t catch him doing anything particularly sinful or sore to the eye. He never really took to abstinence like you did.

He comes trekking through the kitchen, Dave on his heels, to your father’s office. You start and turn to him from your spot at the sink. “Karkat, mother asked you to do the dishes last night,” you tell him, and he scowls at you.

“Whatever, they’re just dishes, it ain’t like they’re a big deal.”

“They are not? They _are._ And do speak properly, Karkat, favor your brother.”

Dave bops up on his feet and whispers something in Karkat’s ear over his shoulder. Karkat snickers, and gives you a smug look, and Dave tries to stifle his.

“What was that?” you ask, “I won’t have the two of you be whispering about yourself like schoolgirls, especially when it’s nasty things about me. Out with it.”

Karkat swallows back a response, but Dave speaks up for him, “I said that you pro’ly don’t talk back so much when your boyfriend’s got ‘is di--,”

You quickly, and loudly, set the glass you’d been drying down on the counter to cut him off and speak over his words, “What did the two of you want?”

“We’re using dad’s computer,” Karkat tells you matter-of-factly. You pretend to not see Dave’s tongue-in-cheek pleasure with himself.

“Did you ask him if you could?” you ask him, crossing your arms over your chest to try and hide your discomfort. Your parents didn’t know about Cronus. Karkat wasn’t supposed to, either, his knowledge was just a slip of the tongue on your part. But, of course, he told Dave. Dave knows everything about your family, and yet, Karkat knows nothing about his.

“Does it matter if I did?” he snaps back, “Are you gonna snitch?”

“I’m not _going to_ do anything. You know you need his permission to be on it, though.”

“We won’t be on it for long,” he tells you, and he brushes past you, “Or maybe we will, I don’t fuckin’ know.” Dave rams his shoulder into yours as he moves by, and you swallow down the instinct to call something rude after the two of them. You go back to drying the dishes and setting them aside to shelf.

They’re just boys, you tell yourself even though you know they’re almost adults, and boys will be boys.

\----

You know what your plan is, to eliminate everyone at the front entrance, and then to take out everyone in the halls as you make your way to the cafeteria, so you can open fire. That’s where everyone is, so that’s where you’re gonna get the most kills. That’s what Dave told you would happen. He said that he only has one person he’s gonna kill, one person that ain’t gonna get away from him, and everyone else is cannon fodder.

 _It’s natural selection_ , he told you one night, while layering duct tape over your pipe bombs, _those who are gonna run are gonna, and those who ain’t gonna run ain’t._

You walk next to him through the hallways, your footsteps the only noise in the joint. It’s first lunch, so some of the kids are in class, and the other kids are in the cafeteria. This is the largest lunch period. There’s about 300 kids in that lunchroom. You’re tall enough to see through some of the class windows and to see that class is taking place just like normal. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s been offset by the two gunshots that have already been fired. You suppose they didn’t chalk them up to gunfire.

You try not to think that Gamzee that waved and grinned at Dave before he got shot. You try not to think that he was your best friend before Dave took on the title.

“Did you tell her?” he asks, casually, like he’s not toting a handgun and a detonator to five bombs in five different classrooms.

“Yeah,” you say, “She didn’t need to die.”

“You like her too much,” he tells you. Which you expect because Dave hates women. He thinks that women are bitches who don’t know their place, which is bullshit, but he won’t hear anything else. He hates what he hates, and Dave hates everything. You have this on record, too, he hates society and he hates high school and he hates his family and he hates the law. But mostly, you think he hates himself. “Terezi’s just another bitch, y’know. Another bitch who thinks she owns the fuckin’ world like all girls do.”

You don’t give him a response. You let the silence fall back down to the pounding of your shoes against the linoleum.

\--- 

===>

“Ain’t he the _cutest?”_ you squeal to your older sister, jerking on her arm. She just sighs and gives you a little laugh, ruffling your hair.

“Alright, sure, kiddo,” she says, coyly, “If you think he is.”

You grab ahold of the fence to watch him closer. He wants to be a _policeman._ He’s so brave and popular and cool and he’s in your backyard! He asked to come over to your house!

Meulin hangs back a little, her eyes flicking from Dave and Karkat to you. You glance over your shoulder to grin, to search for confirmation that Karkat was just the _cutest._ She shakes her head. “They don’t look like any good, ‘Peta.”

“Come on!” you whine, thrusting your arm out over the fence towards him, “Look at him! He’s perfect!”

“And he’s gonna hear you if you don’t lower your voice, kid,” she tells you with a laugh and a blush comes to your cheeks as you slap a hand over your mouth.

You’ve had a crush on Karkat since before you could ever remember. You’re a whole two years younger than him, just a sophomore now, so you know he could never really date you… but that doesn’t mean you can’t hope! Sure, it may seem shallow to have him over just to gawk at him, but you had your sister bake the two of them brownies and you made them lemonade, so it wasn’t like you weren’t treating them well. Your family owned a really nice farm with a great hunk of land, and they had wanted to come out and practice shooting cans in the backyard. Of course, you’d accepted Karkat’s request before he could even finish the sentence, and you’d taken up an extra three chores a week so your mother would let it happen, but he was at your house. It was straight out of a dream.

Sure, Equius and Feferi and everyone else in the book had advised you not to chase after Karkat, but you’re not a very good listener. When you’ve devoted so much of your time to one guy, it’s a little hard to move on from him! Especially since Kurloz practically lives with you, you can’t but help be jealous of your sister. You’ve only ever wanted a sweet boyfriend like him, though maybe with fewer drugs and fewer felonies on his criminal records.

Meulin comes up to stand beside you, gazing over the fence. Karkat takes a couple shots at a can, getting it on his second try, and then handing the gun to Dave. Dave cocks it, plays around with it in his hands, and then puts it up to his head. Meulin starts, and whispers, “Nepeta?”

You blink at him. “Uh… They just told me they were shooting cans, Meu, he’s probably just being silly!”

Karkat immediately starts flipping his shit, and though his yelling is loud enough to scare a couple birds away from your great ol’ oak tree where your old tire swing hangs, you can hardly make out an actual word of what he’s yelling on about. You start to doubt if Dave is playing around after all, and when Meulin looks like she’s finally about to hop over the fence, Dave’s arm drops. You let out a little sigh of relief until it extends out towards where you and your sister stand. She immediately wraps an arm around you and jerks you back from the fence a little.

“What the hell’s he doing?” she hisses, and you can only stare as Karkat stalks up to him and pushes him back. You can tell he’s laughing about getting Karkat so worked up. He grabs the gun from Dave and the two of them wrestle with it for a second before it goes off, right over Karkat’s shoulder, and the both of them jump and go stock-still.

Meulin gives you a look, and says, “Stay here,” before she actually goes on to hop the fence and immediately starts shouting at the pair of boys.

They aren’t allowed to come over and shoot cans anymore after that.

\----

The walk up to the lunchroom doors is the scariest thing you’ve ever done in your life. You don’t know why, but the feeling of knowing what you’re about to do, the eagerness radiating from your best friend, your heart pounding down in your stomach all adds up to a strong feeling of fear.  It’s scarier than when Dave opens them. It’s scarier than the moments you spend in the doorway when nobody notices you the two of you, openly armed. It’s scarier than when Dave detonates the singular pipe bomb under the centermost lunch table and people start to scatter, start to scream, and it’s scarier when he shouts for you to open fire.

The part you horrify yourself with most is when you draw back your gun and begin to shoot people, classmates, teachers, anyone who is in range, and everyone runs and screams to get out the back doors, the side doors, anywhere that isn’t the lunch room. Nobody tries to stop you. Nobody wants to try. You don’t know how many people you killed before you Dave tugs you out back into the hallways, and you try not to think about it. Dave grins to himself and pushes his sunglasses up onto his forehead. You reloaded twice in the cafeteria, and you reload again once you’ve left.

 _“Fuck,”_ he hisses, “Did you see that? I shot Eridan. I shot Eridan _fuckin’_ Ampora, that fucking faggot. _God.”_

He sounds so excitable, like a kid in a candy shop. He gives you the most energetic look you’ve ever seen him give, and he glances around the hallway, “Let’s light up the library next. Come on.”

He starts to run, and with all the sensibility of an idiot, you follow him.

\----

===>

“Shoulders back,” you tell him, and he looks pitiful when he tries to pull them according to your orders. He looks like he’s about to fall over, the sword looks too heavy in his hands, and you give him an unimpressed look.

“You gonna man up an’ finish strifin’ me, or are you gonna pussy out again?” you ask him, and Dave doesn’t look like he wants to fight for any longer than a second, but he still holds himself higher and charges to you on wobbly feet.

He’s down on the second, coughing and sputtering on his own spit, cursing at you and trying not to looks so embarrassed about being defeated. You look down at him, displeased, and roll your eyes. You sheath your sword. “You ain’t even gonna dominate shit if you can’t even hold up your end of a fight, Dave. Get up.”

He draws a hand over his flank and stands up, picking up his sword and holding it dejectedly at his side. The kid’s as tall as you are now and still had a hard time defeating you in a strife on a good day. You ain’t exactly disappointed, mostly for the fact that you’re gonna be fifty sooner than you wanna admit and you’ve got a little more experience in the field, but it don’t mean that you have to like the kinda progress Dave’s made over the years.

Right in the prime of gettin’ better, fresh into middle school, he started getting friendly with some rich white kids and that’s when he started droppin’ right off the end of improvement. Got so tied up in his little boyfriend and that smiley bitch from down the lane he forgot he had more important things to do with himself. God knows how whipped he’d be if you actually let him go on hanging with them. You had to backtrack on so many lessons and teach him to discipline himself, teach him to get over himself, teach him to concentrate. It was a waste of time that you shouldn’t have had to do.

“I’m fine,” he manages, “We’ve been at it for an hour, Bro, I’ve got school tomorrow. Give me a fuckin’ break, alright?”

“Don’t fuckin’ back mouth me, ya li’l shit. You’ve got school almost every day, that ain’t an excuse to slack off. You gonna keep letting an old man beat you? Grow up.”

He almost growls at you, and you bite back some note about treatin’ him like a dog if he wanted to act like one, but you just leave him to sulk on the roof like that the little baby he always pretends he is. It ain’t like he’s fragile and tiny anymore, and it’s not like he ain’t man enough to take whatever you dish out to him. Your kid brother ain’t so much of a kid anymore, and you’re not so willing to treat him like one anymore, either.

You start down the staircase back to your apartment, glancing behind yourself to see if Dave’s gonna trail you and get mouthy again, but the door’s standing still so you figure he wants to be an edgy bitch again, cry to himself and scream at nothing like some sorta lunatic. You’ve dealt with a lot of Dave’s phases pretty damn well, you let him do his Power Rangers things back when he was six and you let him get the masturbatory goods when he was twelve. You’re a good brother when it counts, and when you’ve gotta fix the kid, you’ve gotta fix the kid.

He ain’t gonna know how to protect himself if you don’t teach him to parry and strike, he ain’t gonna get himself married if you kept letting him kiss boys, and he most certainly ain’t gonna get anywhere in this life if he doesn’t realize you’ve done more than your fair share of brotherly duties to keep his ass from being shot up a long, long time ago.

Dave doesn’t show his ugly mug again until you’re already on the couch with a beer, halfway through a rerun of some shitty family sitcom you’re only watching semi-ironically. He drags his sword on the floor, and you holler at him to not mess up your fuckin’ floors, but he just instantly detours into his room and slams the door. Kid’s pro’ly got a lotta think over, a lotta things to hate himself for, and if you let him stew in that shit for a little while before provoking him, his bitterness will be replaced with some hardcore-ass, Strider-inherited anger and his performance on the roof will be up by a hundred.

“Don’t cry too much, Davey!” you call out to him, to get things started, and you kick up your feet onto the coffee table.

\----

The library is the next highest-populated, easy-access area in the entire school, Dave had speculated, but it wouldn’t be after the first bomb went off. Dave detonates number two right under one of the library tables, but most everyone is hidden or gone at this point.

“You want me to try upstairs?” you ask him, but he shakes his head.

“We’re stronger together,” he whispers to you, and then cocks his gun with a purpose, and whistles, “Come on out, y’all. Stand up and we’ll let you go, c’mon.

Nobody moves. You figure there have to be some people in the library since there’s only one entrance to the room, but you figure nobody’s really stupid enough to fall for Dave’s tricks. Dave kicks a chair out from under a table and shoots whoever’s under it. “Y’all hear that shit? You fuckin’ hear that?”

He raises his gun up and shoots the roof, and even you jump. You know for a fact Dave’s enjoying himself way too much, he’s enjoying having the power to _terrify_ and he’s tripping over all of it.

You turn away from him and his taunts, and start to look around yourself. Nobody’s caught up between the shelves, you assume, so you start kicking at desks.

“Oh, you’re all _fucked._ This is for all four years, motherfuckers!” Dave shoots at someone indiscriminate, someone who screams before they go, and you hardly concern yourself with it. You’re really not listening to Dave’s bullshit by now. You hear a sharp beeping noise across the library and you start, and so does Dave. He waves you over to the front desk with his gun, and you follow him with soft steps. He jumps the desk, and looks under it, and then turns on the light to the adjoining office.

Jade Harley. She’s in your English class, and you’ve known her since elementary school. She holds a phone to her chest, and she bites back her fear.

“Any last words, sweetheart?”

She doesn’t look scared. She looks at you, and then at Dave, and she says, “You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“Sure,” Dave says, and then he shoots her dead.

\----

===>

“Jesus, you’re gonna pay me a hundred bucks a fucking pop?” you ask, and the disbelief has to be evident in your voice.

“Yeah.” Dave says with a shrug, “We just need you to make it before school ends. We need to do this sooner than later.”

The two of them stand in front of you like they’re making some kind of winning business deal. This isn’t really winning to you, but a hundred dollars is a hundred dollars, and your laptop is falling apart. As long as you shut up and stay out of their shit, you’re pretty sure you’ll be alright. You could get arrested for supporting them and by giving them the goods in the first place, but fuck it, you can just feign ignorance and pretend to not know English if the police ask you about it.

“So you’re serious about pulling this huge-ass stunt,” you deadpan, and KK doesn’t move, but Dave nods eagerly.

“I’ve been planning it for so long,” he tells you, “I’ve got everything worked out. There isn’t a way in hell that this can go wrong.”

He talks about it like he’s talking about banging Cindy Crawford and not blowing up the cafeteria. Like he’s had avid fantasies of shooting his classmates deader than doornails, and to be honestly, you’d believe someone as loony as Strider would. He’s got serious issues, and if anyone didn’t know that by this point, they were either retarded or believed the best in people, regardless. You just weren’t sure which one KK was.

“I didn’t know you two made that kind of money,” you tell them, looking from Dave to Karkat, and then reclining in your computer chair, “Get me the shit by Wednesday and I can have them all finished by Sunday.” Dave starts to say something, but you decide to keep going, “And I want to know when to stay home from school. I won’t go to the police, but I’d rather kill myself than die because of one of you two dipshits.”

“You’re really okay with this?” Karkat asks, glancing around the room. He looks genuinely guilty, and he hasn’t even fired a gun yet. You didn’t expect Karkat to be the type to go on a raid of societal high school cleansing. Dave, maybe, but not KK. He just isn’t the type of guy you’d expect to do something insane like that. You guess it has been a while since you were just about best friends with him, though, so maybe he’s changed just by being around Strider’s crazy ass. You shrug.

“Fuck no. I think you two are fucking crazy. But I’m not gonna stop you, you’re gonna do it either way.”

“You got that right,” Dave says, snorting, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. Those degenerates deserve this shit.”

It’s the way Dave talks about it that makes the whole thing funny to you. Degenerates. Natural selection. Like these meaningless high school kids deserve to die ‘cause he was called a fag once or twice like every other Joe who walks the damn halls. He tries to sound so profound and noble about something so childish and cowardly. He’s not a good person, no matter how much he’s deluding himself. You aren’t either, but at least you can admit that. At least you can understand that if you make them pipe bombs they’re gonna be used to mass murder your classmates.

Maybe you from three years ago would’ve asked to help, would’ve asked for a pistol to play with to take down Eridan Ampora and his beard, too. But you’re almost out of high school now, and it isn’t gonna matter that a gay guy stole your girlfriend in just a couple of weeks. You could try and tell this to Dave and Karkat, and with how unsettled KK looks you almost want to, but then you rock back in your chair and give your laptop another look. You really do want a nicer one.

“I want my money by Sunday, too,” you tell them, finally, “Or no dice.”

\----

You clear out the library pretty easily, and by then it’s slim picking. Going through the halls, shooting sticklers, breaking down classroom doors as Dave wastes his bullets shooting at lockers and shattering windows and having the best time of his fucking life. You’re willing to bet the police are on their way. It’s barely been ten minutes and there are countless dead.

Dave detonates another bomb, halfway across the school.

You keep on walking down the hall, kicking around the occasional abandoned backpack or crushing a pencil. Some kid pokes out of a classroom, right as you two begin down the hall. The poor unlucky guy he is, he hardly sees the two of you until it’s too late, and Dave almost shoots him but you startle and immediately knock his wrist down.

“John,” you say, and he looks so, so surprised to see the two of you, he steps out of the doorway, and lets the door close behind him, and he starts to walk up to you until Dave raising his gun arm again and he comes to a stop, raising his hands up. His mouth hangs open for a little bit, and Dave’s stare hardens. He looks between the two of you, looking oh-so-confused.

“Why?” he asks you two, not looking scared, or angry, but severely disappointed. The question takes you by surprise. You look at Dave, and he doesn’t seem to have an answer, either. No babble about natural selection, no bullshit about how they deserved this. He stares at John and he does nothing. If Dave believes in his natural selection, John would be dead, because he’s not running. But he doesn’t shoot.

“I told you not to come to school,” Dave tells him, and his gun arm is shaking, he’s staring at John with this uneasiness you can’t place.

“I had a bio test,” John tells him, softly, angling his head, “I didn’t want to miss it.”

Dave doesn’t make a move to shoot him. You figure he’s not gonna. John’s a kid with a future. He’s a kid who’s been nice to you since before you were nice to anymore. You wave your gun aside, and you tell him, “Get out of here, Egbert.”

But he doesn’t. Dave shoots him, you don’t see where, but Egbert crumples and you take in a deep breath of air.

“Dumbass,” Dave says, emotionless. He takes off the aviators and tosses them to John on the floor, and he starts walking off with his shoulders hunched up. You follow him, stepping around John, and making sure not to look at him, either.

\----

===>

You give Dave his bio homework every day just before fourth period, which is when you have it together. You do it for him charge-free because you’re just a pretty nice guy, and because you’re practically begging him to pay attention to you at this point. He’s been so totally a-wall, completely ignoring you. Which blows, because you really love hanging out with him even if his apartment is in a really shady part of town that terrifies you to absolutely no end.

You and Dave have been an on-and-off thing for a while, mostly secret, and mostly kissing him in the bathroom after class. Sometimes you’ll get to him below the waist, but it’s only when he wants you to, and when you feel like it. Neither of you are trying to get caught up in ugly rumors right before the end of school as you know it. But even though Dave is usually pretty stoic about you and everything else, lately he’s been more stoic about everything without you as a subsection.

No pre-warning, no idea why, he just suddenly cuts you off from himself with no prior warning as to why. Not to mention you hate being caught off guard like that. You’ve had it up to here with him being so completely cut-off from you, and you’re not about to graduate and part ways from him. You tug him into the boy’s bathroom downstairs during second lunch, the one nobody uses because it has two out-of-service toilets and because the kids who smoke during lunch can always just out into the commons.

“Are you mad at me?” you ask him, testily, because you don’t like it when anybody’s mad at you. Especially someone you care about as much as Dave. The two of you have had a steadier sort-of relationship than you’d ever had with any girl. Hell, the only reason you didn’t make things public is because Dave was so insecure about the whole thing. He told you it was because of his Bro and yadda, yadda, but you only thought he was ashamed of you. It’s not like you were anything to be ashamed of, though.

“No, John. Did you not do my homework or something?”

You roll your eyes and pull the paper out of your backpack, waving it front of him, and then folding it over and holding it at your side. Dave’s basically failing the rest of his classes, and you doing his bio homework is basically just an excuse to be alone with him if he ever needs one. He shouldn’t really care if you’ve done it or not.  “I miss you, Dave,” you tell him, “I feel like you’re ignoring me. You know I’m more than your homework machine.”

“Are you?” Dave asks, raising an eyebrow, and you raise an eyebrow right back at him. He sighs, and your eyebrow just drops right back down. “Alright, you are. I’m just real busy right now, John. No time to be messing around with any guy.”

“You say that like there’s a multitude of guys,” you tell him, “It’s just me and you, Dave! Come on, don’t be a sourpuss, tell me what’s up. Please? Pretty please?”

You grin up at him, holding your hands together under your chin in a mockery of a beg, and he turns away. “I’m fine.”

You roll your eyes. Obviously, he’s not fine, and he must know that you’re not gonna buy that bullshit if he knows you at all. You step up to tap the side of his face endearingly, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“John--,”

“Tell me,” you tap his face again, and he scowls and pushes you away. You step back and give him a pouty look that usually works to win him over, but he doesn’t even look at you. He just gathers up his backpack and snags his bio homework from you. He crumples it with hardly any car and folds it over itself to shove it into his pocket.

“I don’t have time for this bullshit, alright?” he says, snippily, “Look, I don’t know what sort of ideas are happening upstairs, John, but none of that fruity shit is going to fly anymore. I’m over it. You should get over it, too.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” you ask him, wrinkling up your brow, “You’re just done? Uh, pardon me, sir, but you’re the one who started things here.”

“You don’t understand, alright?” he tells you, “We weren’t even dating, so it’s not like I’m even breaking up with you, dumbass. I’m sure there’s another guy who will let you suck his dick, so don’t worry.”

“Dave, what is this about?” you ask him, choosing to ignore the dick-sucking comment in favor being polite by his standards, “Is this about your Bro? I haven’t said anything to anyone, I really haven’t. And you know I won’t until you want me to.”

“It’s not about that, alright? Just stop coming onto me. I’m not cool with it, alright? So knock it off,” he runs a hand through his hair, glances around shakily, “I’m gonna hurt you, so just leave me the hell alone.”

“Stop being like that,” you tell him, “I won’t let you hurt me, dumbass. I don’t need you to protect me from yourself, stupid. That’s such a bullshit excuse.”

“You don’t know what going on, okay?” he snaps.

“Then _tell_ me!”

“I’m _going_ to hurt you,” he says, and he looks like he wants to say more. But he just bites it back, glances back at the door, then to you. He says, “Don’t come to school on Monday.”

You blink after him and give it three minutes before you follow out, as per the rule.

\----

All the bombs have gone off but one, since it didn’t blow. Dave gets pissed at Sollux for a faulty bomb, starts yelling about how he’s just thrown a hundred down the drain and shoots the lockers some more. But you know in the end it doesn’t really matter. You two are done here. It’s been twenty minutes, there are police on the scene by this point, and you’re watching them out of the big windows on the second story.

“They haven’t breached the building,” you tell him when he stops shooting at the ceiling, “But they’re gonna, soon.”

He crosses over to the window, and waves out, before falling back. You follow him slowly, staring back at the window, and then jog to catch up with him.

“You think Terezi stayed home?” you ask him, and he shrugs.

“Maybe,” he tells you, “Imagine the lucky fucks who were sick today.”

“Sure would’ve been the right day for it,” you agree, “You about done here?”

“Yeah,” he tells you, stopping short in the hallway, “God, ain’t it gorgeous? We’re gonna go down in history, Karkat. You and me.”

“Maybe you,” you tell him, “I’m gonna go downstairs and turn myself in.”

He gives you a crazed look. “What?” he asks in disbelief, “You ain’t doing shit! You’re gonna go to jail, Karkat, and you’ll gonna suffer there for the rest of your life. Better we die now, and die easy.”

“Natural selection,” you tell him, “It didn’t choose me, Dave.”

He stares at you, and then he laughs. He cocks his gun and sticks it right under his head. “You’re a fucking idiot, Karkat,” he tells you, “You had so much to live for, you know that? You had so much to live for, and now you won’t even die with me.”

“You’re not worth dying for,” you tell him, and you turn away, “I’ll seeya, Dave.”

Dave waits a moment, and then calls after you as you walk away, “I’ll seeya, Karkat, right on the other side.”

And then he blows his brains out.

\----

===>

Your thumb scrubs over the side of your handgun as you step down the stairs, and you stare ahead at the front doors. The important backpack is abandoned somewhere upstairs, filled with detonators and magazines and Dave’s map of the school outlined in crude stylings. The sky was bluer than it was twenty minutes ago, and the chatter from the students and officers that lurked outside were ringing in your ears.

You drop your gun on the front stoop, and you put your hands up.


End file.
